He was a proper old-fashioned London geezer (cringe word, hate it, can't think of a better one, worst of all it's the correct word), kind of East Endy, kind of Real London, the kind you don't really meet but if you do it always feels like an uncanny immersive theatre experience. They're anachronistic. They only belong in the London collectively imagined by people who don't spend any time in it.
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Mon, 01 Dec 2025 23:38:15
this is possible in mazelike research sprints on the internet
a lot of what i've been doing has been some imaginary screenshot or recording of his website, something that could be found within it
i know a little bit of lacan which probably influences me in a way i cant articulate
so i or you can author smaller fragments that get arranged
I'm sat out the front of a cafe in Hatton Garden. I've just eaten a brie and bacon panini, and I'm rolling a cigarette. Feeling very London. An old man comes up to me and asks for a roll-up. I oblige.
we can only engage in such a way
what do you mean
division of reality is straying away from it
The only real Londoner remaining is old, bitter, kept around for entertainment, defined by tropes from 30+ years ago. They play gangsters in films, or they work in a pie and mash shop, or they go on Business Insider's YouTube channel to tell you about their crimes. And they somehow still find the time to spend all day hanging about cafes and pubs for you to bump into, to remind you of Real London.
The studio designs some piece of media to perpetuate the marketable concept of Real London, while the real London is hollowed out by hollow bankers or whatever. Not pulling on that thread. But the yuppies don't mind because they're free to iterate on Real London without any competition from real London because it's too concerned with its slow eradication. And there's nice flats to live in now or whatever. The yuppies can begin to inhabit their Real London.
The Hatton geezer (fuck off) reminds me of this old failed actor who I'd met at a party a few years ago, another man out of time and out of place. This actor had scored a minor role in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and never really let go of it, had gone on to build his whole identity around it. I can't really blame him.
which magnetises chains of pins
i got bored though because i knew all of the different arrangements of it. i probably needed to stick at it longer to get it dense enough to feel navigable in a way that was engaging to me
Thank you, Jack
theres a kind of a cowardice to generative art that i want to avoid though. i want the kind of relationship to this thing that a game designer has to a game engine
its performative
isaac newton
no i haven't really read anything
okay im going very rogue and very inarticulate
a version of this existed for a few months last year but it was static. it was HTML with writing and pictures and videos and sounds. i had this feeling that the code should be as important as the content, that structurally each piece in relation to each other piece shouldn't change, that the mazelike quality should emerge from me intricately arranging paths through it. like classic hypertext
that is unstable and lets me operate in that discovery mode that i can create within and also produce works from.
somewhere between instagram and chatgpt
all that is to say
i understand
you cannot feed someone language, they have to speak
propensity within someone